Hold up a minute on the Super Sports Sam & consider the LA Racer. It's the same price & a much nicer looking plane IMO & probably your Dad's too. It sounds like we have similar tastes in airplanes. This little guy has pretty sharp looking lines, it's a Tail-Dragger & considered to be an Aerobatic Trainer with a fully symetrical airfoil. It even has a little cowl. You can have this little bird up & ready in a weekend with the salvaged gear & engine from your Easy Sport no problem. Actually it looks to be a simple & quick assembling airplane that could be done in a day, but after rushing to get my Cap done when I originally assembled it last year, then loosing it this week do to a bad CA hinging job on my part (elevators came out of the stab) I've learned to slow down & not be in such a hurry to get it done. This one could be assembled well & right in two days at an un-hurried pace. It comes in four different color schemes as well. I was gonna buy it so that I too would still have another aerobatic plane to practice on, but my flying buddy told me they should still have an Ultimate 40S left that was a scratch & dent with basicly no real damage just a couple dimples in the covering on the bottom side of the wing. Sure enough when I got there he still had it & gave it to me for $90 so I couldn't pass that up. But I think you'll like the LA Racer. I'll put up a link of it for you to see it in all for colors. This link is from Airborne Models because they are within 20 minutes of my house I just go there to pick up what I need. Since you're back east it might be cheaper for you to order from Hobby Warehouse out of Kentucky. Unless you know of another WM distributor that's closer to where you live. I originally ordered my Cap from them & paid another twenty something bucks in shipping to get it out here.When it arrived I opened the shipping box & first thing I see on the Model box is a sticker reading Airborne Models Livermore, Ca.[&:] So I paid them all that money to ship me an airplane that they got from a place 20 minutes from my house. Lol. check it out & see if you like it before you buyanother Trike gear plane for the same price.

http://www.airborne-models.com/html/...p?ProductID=91


Good luck & chin up, it's all just part of the process to get us to the kind of planes we want to be able to fly.